178 BERKELEY, ON CRYPLOGAMIC BOTANY. 
points of interest, which throw more or less light on the processes which 
occupy the attention of the investigator of the vital processes of the higher 
vegetables. Amongst the lowest vegetables he will find many facts wliich 
will give him points of comparison with inmates of the animal kingdom; he 
will see apparent Infusoria existing as mere vegetable organs, and will find 
them performing functions under a form which he will in vain hunt for 
amongst the higher vegetables, and if his attention be turned to those 
Cryptogams which more closely resemble these in outward appearance, he 
will find a form of spermatozoid so closely resembling the impregnatory 
bodies of the higher animals, as to open his mind more strongly than ever to 
a conviction of the intimate bond by which all the members of the organized 
world are bound, though he may not subscribe to those theories which deny 
the existence of definite groups. There can be no question in these cases of 
the spermatozoids being developed in perfect freedom within the mother- 
cells, and not mere appendages separated from their walls, and endowed. 
with a vital action, similar to that of the cilia, so common to mucous sur- 
faces, as many animal physiologists assert. Such investigations will come 
in aid then of those relative to the development of spermatozoa in animals, 
and similar advantages will be presented in many other instances, and con- 
sequently the cryptogamic student will be able to form more exact notions 
as to vital action in the animal and vegetable kingdoms than are usually held 
by those who confine their investigations to either division of the organized 
world. Again, though spiral vessels are comparatively rare in Cryptogams, 
opportunities of studying their development and nature are nowhere more 
available than amongst the Hepatice, where they occur without the inter- 
vention or attachment of any other issue, while in Zyguzema the curious and 
multiplied spiral bands may with ease be traced from the first formation of 
the cells in which they are developed. 
“There is another point of immense importance, which the cryptogamic 
observer has in a peculiar degree the power of studying successfully. Ques- 
tions often arise as to the point whether cellular structure can originate 
without the presence of a previous mother-cell. It is a question, for in- 
stance, whether cells are ever formed in Phanogams from mere organizable 
sap, as presumed by Mirbel in his paper on the Date Palm; or again, 
whether, in what is called organizable lymph in the animal world, cells can 
originate freely without pullulation from the neighbouring tissue with which 
the lymph is in contact. In the blood, once more, are blood-globules, or in 
unhealthy conditions, pus-globules, ever formed simply from the constituents 
of the blood itself, without the concurrence of previously formed organisms ? 
Now in those fungi in which, as in Spheria and Peziza, the reproductive 
bodies are generated by the endochrome of the fructifying cells, the Cryp- 
togamist has the power of watching the development of the spores from 
the very moment when the endochrome commences to be organized, 
and he can with confidence assert that they are not the creatures of pre- 
viously existing cells, but the produce of the endochrome itself. He 
will be able to compare with this what takes place in the embryo sac of 
Pheenogams, and will be better prepared to appreciate all the arguments 
which bear upon the Schleidenian Theory of the formation of the embryo. 
Both the formation of the albumen and of the embryo itself will then be 
studied with greater zest, and he will certainly, after watching the origin of 
spores within an ascus, be able to judge better of what takes place or does 
not take place within the pollen tube. It is true that many of the points [ 
have mentioned may be examined profitably in Phenogams, but always 
with more difficulty, and seldom with such precision or with such satisfac- 
tion and conviction to the observer, and there is one point which must 
always be borne in mind, that the objects in question grow and are developed 
